1 The Boy Who Survived (1)

In the end there was no salvation for the embittered world. Decades of changes, caused by an unforeseen global extinction event, left the few survivors without much hope. There's had been an enlightened civilization on the cusp of technological glory. They had ended disease, world hunger, and created marvels that reached for the heavens themselves. They had even begun to explore the reaches of the far cosmos. Given enough time perhaps they may have used their growing knowledge of spaceflight to escape the apocalypse that now burned their dwindling atmosphere. The universe however is a fickle mistress; and her gift to these intrepid pioneers was a harsh one indeed. Before the event not even the greatest minds of the "Mindakan" people would have been able to predict the existence of a dark matter mass. A condensed, impossibly heavy, chunk of matter that spiraled through the reaches of space. It gave off no heat, nor radiation; there was no indication of any kind as to such it being a real existence. Until a 10 mile piece of this impossible material collided with the Mindakan homeworld. What transpired was a massive sundering of the world and a global firestorm that raged across the forsaken world. Despite their vast knowledge and technology the initial impact exterminated 97% of the Mindakan population and almost 99% of all life on the world. The remaining survivors used their existing prowess of nano tech buildings and created a few vast impermeable enclosures to survive the harsh, toxic fall out. Decades passed but there was no improvement to the existing situation. The Mindakan population faced shortages of resources and many despaired. In the end of the 10 initial nano tech compounds formed to house the dying species, only one remained.

"The Reach" was more a vast warehouse than housing for it's initial more than 10,000 residents. In three short decades however, this population had dwindled down to a few hundred. They were a dying settlement. Duarthe Banon was an orphan. His thin, emaciated frame seemed to almost be swallowed by his surroundings when he walked through the large nano tech shelter. He had lost his entire family at 10; he was found by a "Reach" resource expedition; barely alive, laying against the frozen corpses of his family. Fortunately, his nano receptors, devices in most Mindakans that regulated body functions managed to preserve his higher brain functions. He was saved and brought to the "Reach". Since recovering consciousness he did not say a world; his quietness unnerved many of his fellow survivors and thus for the subsequent 10 years he lived a mostly secluded life from his fellow Mindakans.